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‘Caffeine’ : The Rose Affair

Today our favourite band, The Rose Affair, released their new single ‘Caffeine’. The lyrics are poetic and catching, the music video is beautiful and full of cryptic messages, the upbeat riffs mirror perfectly the message of addictive emotion. It signals the next stage of a band ever growing as lead singer, Lucas Jones, comes more and more into himself in both performance and lyrical poetry.

We approve.

I caught up with Lucas to talk about the song, it’s process and it’s inspiration.

Tell us a little bit about what the band has been up to since your last release, ‘II’. What’s been going on? How have things changed?

We’ve been gigging and writing as much as possible! The gigs have been noticeably different lately, audiences singing lyrics back has become thing. And we had an encore the other night, we were like ‘Fuck, what do we play?’ it was mental.

‘Caffeine’ is pretty different from a lot of your other stuff, more upbeat! Was that a conscious change or did it just happen?

It’s always super interesting when people say our new stuff sounds different because I’ve observed the track from birth to finality and so I never know at which point it became ‘different’. It’s like getting taller, you don’t really clock it until someone calls you out on it. It’s definitely more upbeat sonically than say ‘Taurus’, but lyrically it’s the same depressing kinda’ vibe. Going by lyrics alone we don’t actually have any upbeat songs, come to think of it; the upbeat guitar riffs are a bit of a trick.

Were there any particular musical or literary influences on the track?

Personally I’ve been listening to Radiohead quite a bit, but I’m pretty certain ‘Caffeine’ sounds precisely 0% Radiohead influenced. It’s quite ‘On The Road’ inspired, subconsciously; The ‘Hotel wedding sex’ kind of dirty, broken, Vegas stuff. Matt’s been playing Catfish and The Bottlemen a fair bit too, so I think there’s a drop of them in there.

Tell us about writing and recording caffeine! Did you straight away have the sound in mind, or did it take a while to find it?

Matt and I were sitting in the living room as per usual, and he played that riff, the intro, and I was like ‘Yooooo!!’. The first thing that came out of my mouth was the opening lyrics, which kind of set the tone for the whole song, then Jacob and Tom sprinkled their magic all over it. When it came to recording, we have a really solid idea of how our producer Jake can make bits come to life and so we wrote it very much with production in mind. ‘The sound’ is very much Jake’s work to be honest, you could mix Caffeine so many different ways.

You’re gigging more and more nowadays, but what’s number 1? Gigging or writing?

Eeeeek, hmmmm. Tough one. I guess gigging is the ultimate because what are songs without gigs? But then writing because what are gigs otherwise?! Chicken & egg scenario. Fuck it, gigs. People singing and moving and smiling to something that was born in our minds, nothing better in the world.

What are the band’s goals for the year? What’s next?

TO TAKE OVER EVERYTHING. Nah, to just keep on progressing. Kind of not joking about taking over everything I suppose but not in a dictatorship way, in an incredibly grateful and humble way within the time frame that is most conducive to our longevity. To sign with the label of my dreams would be gangbusters. (I learnt that expression today, it means great. It’s such a sick phrase, it’s so over the top).